Africa-Press – Uganda. ELECTION WATCH 2021 |Independent presidential candidate Nancy Kalembe has pledged to end maternal deaths if she is elected president.Kalembe made the promise on Wednesday morning while campaigning in Kabale district. She addressed several groups of people in Kabale municipality.”You all know that we lose innocent souls in Uganda as a result of the poorly equipped hospitals and health centres. As a woman, I promise you that if I am elected, it will not happen again,” she said.Kalembe also promised to improve education and public infrastructure, noting that the current leadership has not prioritised people’s welfare.She said it is the right time for Ugandans to have a woman at the helm if Uganda is to develop.”Men have shown us what they can do, but you know that women are mothers and naturally pitiful. Children will live healthy lives if women are empowered because they care a lot about living standards of their children. We also need peaceful power transfer from military to civilian rule,” she said.On cooperativesKalembe also pledged to revive co-operatives if elected.She said the National Resistance Movement had done nothing to revive the co-operatives despite continuous cries from Ugandans.”The collapse of co-operatives was a deliberate political move by selfish individuals in government to silence the voice of small-scale business operators. If elected into power, the revival of the trade cooperatives and the Cooperative Bank will be on top of my agenda,” she said.In June last year, co-operatives and trade minister Amelia Kyambadde said Cabinet had approved the re-establishment of the Cooperative Bank and set 2021 as the revival year.On wetland restorationKalembe added it was improper for the Government to evict farmers from wetlands in Rubanda, Kisoro and Kabale districts without compensation because they have been there for 30 years.The Ministry of Water and Environment in October started demarcating a number of wetlands and rivers in the Kigezi sub-region in a bid to restore them.Some of the targeted wetlands are Ekona in Kabale municipality, Rufuha and Kabasheshe in Ntungamo, among others.Kalembe said chasing Ugandans out of wetlands is not a solution to the challenges the country is facing.”What our leaders need to know is that Ugandans need to be treated as citizens of this country. It is not right for the Government to grab land from them and give it to foreigners like in Lwera wetland,” she said.
